Wuthering Heights

- covering every morsel of blank that the printer had left.  Some
were detached sentences; other parts took the form of a regular
diary, scrawled in an unformed, childish hand.  At the top of an
extra page (quite a treasure, probably, when first lighted on) I
was greatly amused to behold an excellent caricature of my friend
Joseph, - rudely, yet powerfully sketched.  An immediate interest
kindled within me for the unknown Catherine, and I began forthwith
to decipher her faded hieroglyphics.

'An awful Sunday,' commenced the paragraph beneath.  'I wish my
father were back again.  Hindley is a detestable substitute - his
conduct to Heathcliff is atrocious - H. and I are going to rebel -
we took our initiatory step this evening.

'All day had been flooding with rain; we could not go to church, so
Joseph must needs get up a congregation in the garret; and, while
Hindley and his wife basked downstairs before a comfortable fire -
doing anything but reading their Bibles, I'll answer for it -
Heathcliff, myself, and the unhappy ploughboy were commanded to
take our prayer-books, and mount:  we were ranged in a row, on a
sack of corn, groaning and shivering, and hoping that Joseph would
shiver too, so that he might give us a short homily for his own
sake.  A vain idea!  The service lasted precisely three hours; and
yet my brother had the face to exclaim, when he saw us descending,
"What, done already?"  On Sunday evenings we used to be permitted
to play, if we did not make much noise; now a mere titter is
sufficient to send us into corners.

'"You forget you have a master here," says the tyrant.  "I'll
demolish the first who puts me out of temper!  I insist on perfect
sobriety and silence.  Oh, boy! was that you?  Frances darling,
pull his hair as you go by:  I heard him snap his fingers."
Frances pulled his hair heartily, and then went and seated herself
on her husband's knee, and there they were, like two babies,
kissing and talking nonsense by the hour - foolish palaver that we
should be ashamed of.  We made ourselves as snug as our means
allowed in the arch of the dresser.  I had just fastened our
pinafores together, and hung them up for a curtain, when in comes
Joseph, on an errand from the stables.  He tears down my handiwork,
boxes my ears, and croaks:

'"T' maister nobbut just buried, and Sabbath not o'ered, und t'
sound o' t' gospel still i' yer lugs, and ye darr be laiking!
Shame on ye! sit ye down, ill childer! there's good books eneugh if
ye'll read 'em:  sit ye down, and think o' yer sowls!"

'Saying this, he compelled us so to square our positions that we
might receive from the far-off fire a dull ray to show us the text
of the lumber he thrust upon us.  I could not bear the employment.
I took my dingy volume by the scroop, and hurled it into the dog-
kennel, vowing I hated a good book.  Heathcliff kicked his to the
same place.  Then there was a hubbub!

'"Maister Hindley!" shouted our chaplain.  " Maister, coom hither!
Miss Cathy's riven th' back off 'Th' Helmet o' Salvation,' un'
Heathcliff's pawsed his fit into t' first part o' 'T' Brooad Way to
Destruction!'  It's fair flaysome that ye let 'em go on this gait.
Ech! th' owd man wad ha' laced 'em properly - but he's goan!"

'Hindley hurried up from his paradise on the hearth, and seizing
one of us by the collar, and the other by the arm, hurled both into
the back-kitchen; where, Joseph asseverated, "owd Nick would fetch
us as sure as we were living:  and, so comforted, we each sought a
separate nook to await his advent.  I reached this book, and a pot
of ink from a shelf, and pushed the house-door ajar to give me
light, and I have got the time on with writing for twenty minutes;
but my companion is impatient, and proposes that we should
appropriate the dairywoman's cloak, and have a scamper on the
moors, under its shelter.  A pleasant suggestion - and then, if the
surly old man come in, he may believe his prophecy verified - we
cannot be damper, or colder, in the rain than we are here.'

* * * * * *

I suppose Catherine fulfilled her project, for the next sentence
took up another subject:  she waxed lachrymose.

'How little did I dream that Hindley would ever make me cry so!'
she wrote.  'My head aches, till I cannot keep it on the pillow;
and still I can't give over.  Poor Heathcliff!  Hindley calls him a
vagabond, and won't let him sit with us, nor eat with us any more;
and, he says, he and I must not play together, and threatens to
turn him out of the house if we break his orders.  He has been
blaming our father (how dared he?) for treating H. too liberally;
and swears he will reduce him to his right place - '

* * * * * *

I began to nod drowsily over the dim page:  my eye wandered from
manuscript to print.  I saw a red ornamented title - 'Seventy Times
Seven, and the First of the Seventy-First.'  A Pious Discourse
delivered by the Reverend Jabez Branderham, in the Chapel of
Gimmerden Sough.'  And while I was, half-consciously, worrying my
brain to guess what Jabez Branderham would make of his subject, I
sank back in bed, and fell asleep.  Alas, for the effects of bad
tea and bad temper!  What else could it be that made me pass such a
terrible night?  I don't remember another that I can at all compare
with it since I was capable of suffering.

I began to dream, almost before I ceased to be sensible of my